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The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

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#773

:fire:

46% support impeaching and removing Trump from office!!!

The poll numbers are in on impeachment, and it’s not good news for President Donald Trump. A clear plurality of Americans approve of the House’s impeachment inquiry into Trump, and they are split on whether they want to impeach and remove him from office.

Americans are more eager to impeach Trump now than they were at similar points in the impeachment sagas of Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.

Impeachment actions usually start off as being unpopular with the American public. After the House voted to start an impeachment inquiry of Clinton in October 1998, a CBS News/New York Times poll found that 45% approved and 53% disapproved.

But with Trump, those numbers are reversed. In an average of polls taken since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal inquiry last week, 51% support an impeachment inquiry. A minority, 44%, are against it.

When it comes to impeaching and removing Trump from office, the difference is even more dramatic. An average of polls taken since early last week shows that 46% support impeaching and removing Trump from office. That’s about equal with the 45% who are against such an action.

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#774

THIS could explain why Kurt Volker so suddenly resigned and seems willing to play ball with congress.

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#775

@Windthin

Full story from WSJ

Trump, in August Call With GOP Senator, Denied Official’s Claim on Ukraine Aid

Trump, in August Call With GOP Senator, Denied Official’s Claim on Ukraine Aid - WSJ

President Trump denied that he had linked military aid to Ukraine with a commitment by Kyiv to investigate the 2016 presidential elections when pressed on the matter by a Republican senator in August, according to the lawmaker.

In an interview, Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) said he learned of a potential quid pro quo from the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, who told him that aid to Ukraine was tied to the desire by Mr. Trump and his allies to have Kyiv undertake investigations related to the 2016 U.S. elections.

Mr. Johnson raised the issue with Mr. Trump in a phone call on Aug. 31, shortly before the senator was due to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the call, Mr. Trump flatly rejected the notion that he directed aides to make military aid to Ukraine contingent on a new investigation by Kyiv, Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Johnson, who supports aid to Ukraine and is the chairman of a Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the region, said Mr. Trump was adamant on the issue. “He said—expletive deleted—‘No way. I would never do that. Who told you that?” the Wisconsin senator recalled. Mr. Johnson told Mr. Trump that he had learned of the arrangement from Mr. Sondland.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Sondland, a former hotel executive and major Trump donor who was confirmed to the ambassador job last year, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment through a spokesperson.

Mr. Johnson’s account, coupled with a release of text messages involving Mr. Sondland by three House committees late Thursday, show Trump administration officials believed there was a link between Mr. Trump’s decision in July to order a hold on nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine and his interest in having Ukraine investigate election interference and Democrat Joe Biden. Mr. Trump ordered the hold a week before he spoke to Mr. Zelensky on July 25, a call in which he pressed Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden and election interference.

That July call sparked a whistleblower complaint that has in turn led to an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats.

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#776

WSJ writers who wrote this article discuss this incriminating information, with T’s denial. Thanks @Windthin (am posting similar links plus a tweet!)

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#777

Mike Pence just received a document request from Engel, Schiff and Cummings dated 10/04/19

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#778

Cross-posting :pray:

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#779

:boom:

Intelligence Community Inspector General corroborates whistleblower’s complaint

The Republicans’ “hearsay” defense of Trump has evaporated. The Intelligence Community Inspector General just provided solid corroboration of the whistleblower’s complaint. When are the Republicans going to own up that we have a traitor in the White House?

The intelligence community inspector general provided documents to the House Intelligence Committee showing how he attempted to corroborate a whistleblower complaint alleging President Donald Trump solicited foreign interference to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson briefed the House Intelligence panel behind closed doors today about the whistleblower complaint, two weeks after he appeared before the same committee prior to the complaint being released.

The sources added that Atkinson’s testimony mostly covered the process of corroborating the complaint.
…
Atkinson is widely regarded as a career non-partisan with little interest in the public limelight, but currently finds himself at the center of the high profile controversy over the whistleblower complaint alleging that the President pressured the Ukrainian president in an effort to “solicit interference” in the 2020 presidential election.
…
Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat on the committee, told reporters as he left the briefing that Atkinson “cemented” how “thorough he was” in corroborating the complaint.
…
"Let’s put this in perspective, folks," he said. "What the inspector general said last time was the whistleblower pulled the fire alarm. We have now seen the smoke and the fire."

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#780

House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings subpoenas White House for Ukraine documents

House Democrats warned Wednesday that they would issue the subpoena by the end of the week if administration officials refused to comply with the request for materials.





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#781

Summary of Impeachment Inquiry into Trump 2019

October 2nd-4th

General Congressional News:

News:

Documents:

Judiciary Committee Investigations into Trump 2019:

News:

Oversight And Reform Committee Investigations into Trump 2019:

News:

Documents:

Intelligence Committee Investigations into Trump 2019:

News:

Documents:

Ways And Means Committee Investigations into Trump 2019:

News:

Forgeign Affairs Committee Investigations into Trump 2019:

News:

Documents:

Financial Services Committee Investigations into Trump 2019:

News:

Other House and Senate Committees:

News:

Documents:

:newspaper: Timeline has been updated. Breaking news starts below. :point_down:

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#782

So I realized I should probably be publishing the summary I create when I update the timeline. :woman_facepalming:t2:

This was everything from the last three days!

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#783

Oh shit!

A second intelligence official who was alarmed by President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine is weighing whether to file his own formal whistle-blower complaint and testify to Congress, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The official has more direct information about the events than the first whistle-blower, whose complaint that Mr. Trump was using his power to get Ukraine to investigate his political rivals touched off an impeachment inquiry. The second official is among those interviewed by the intelligence community inspector general to corroborate the allegations of the original whistle-blower, one of the people said.

The inspector general, Michael Atkinson, briefed lawmakers privately on Friday about how he substantiated the whistle-blower’s account. It was not clear whether he told lawmakers that the second official is considering filing a complaint.

A new complaint, particularly from someone closer to the events, would potentially add further credibility to the account of the first whistle-blower, a C.I.A. officer who was detailed to the National Security Council at one point. He said that he relied on information from more than half a dozen American officials to compile his allegations about Mr. Trump’s campaign to solicit foreign election interference that could benefit him politically.

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#784

Trump’s calls with foreign leaders have long worried aides, leaving some ‘genuinely horrified’

In one of his first calls with a head of state, President Trump fawned over Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling the man who ordered interference in America’s 2016 election that he was a great leader and apologizing profusely for not calling him sooner.

He pledged to Saudi officials in another call that he would help the monarchy enter the elite Group of Seven, an alliance of the world’s leading democratic economies.

He promised the president of Peru that he would deliver to his country a C-130 military cargo plane overnight, a logistical nightmare that set off a herculean scramble in the West Wing and Pentagon.

And in a later call with Putin, Trump asked the former KGB officer for his guidance in forging a friendship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — a fellow authoritarian hostile to the United States.

Starting long before revelations about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine’s president rocked Washington, Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders were an anxiety-ridden set of events for his aides and members of the administration, according to former and current officials. They worried that Trump would make promises he shouldn’t keep, endorse policies the United States long opposed, commit a diplomatic blunder that jeopardized a critical alliance, or simply pressure a counterpart for a personal favor.

“There was a constant undercurrent in the Trump administration of [senior staff] who were genuinely horrified by the things they saw that were happening on these calls,” said one former White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations. “Phone calls that were embarrassing, huge mistakes he made, months and months of work that were upended by one impulsive tweet.”

[…]

Joel Willett, a former intelligence officer who worked at the National Security Council from 2014 to 2015, said he was concerned both by the descriptions of a president winging it, and the realization that the president’s behavior disturbs and frightens career civil servants.

“What a burden it must be to be stuck between your position of trust in the White House and another obligation you may feel to the American people to say something,” he said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Thursday or Friday.

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#785

:eyes:

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#786

Could his own department go rogue? Members have already!

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#787

More polling are pointing to voters being waaay more interested in impeachment…especially college-educated men and especially women. A groundswell for sure…adding to @Keaton_James polling above. :boom:

In some cases, that shift has already begun.

Back-to-back polls this week found greater support for the impeachment proceedings than opposition among white voters with college degrees — a group that backed Trump over Hillary Clinton by a slightly greater margin in 2016, according to publicly available exit data. Fifty percent of college-educated whites in an NPR/Marist College survey said they approved of House Democrats’ decision to launch the formal impeachment inquiry into Trump. That compares to a narrower margin of support for the move, 45-43, in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday.

“If you look at college-educated whites, those are probably some of the most engaged voters. They are a big and important chunk of the electorate and they have shifted the most resolutely toward impeachment so far,” Roberts said.

Even more dangerous for the president and his allies is the apparent groundswell of support for impeachment among women — including self-described independents, white women with college degrees and women in suburban communities. Five polls conducted since last Tuesday have shown majorities of women endorsing Democratic efforts to remove Trump from office, ranging from 57 percent of registered female voters who strongly or somewhat approve of impeachment in a CBS survey released Sunday to 62 percent of women in a Quinnipiac University survey released Monday who said they think “Trump believes he is above the law.”

The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found a 15-point gap between independent women who support impeachment (48 percent) and voters within the same demographic who oppose it (33 percent). A similar gap emerged in the NPR/Marist survey among suburban women, 57 percent of whom said they support the impeachment inquiry versus 39 percent who disapprove of the move.

“I really don’t like where we are right now,” said one prominent Republican pollster.

To be sure, some of the same polls include evidence suggesting impeachment could become a political risk for Democrats as they head into a heated election year. And the rapid-pace environment in which the impeachment process has already unfolded, combined with varying levels of understanding of the process itself, mean a lot of voters are still in “wait-and-see mode,” according to Roberts.

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#788

What happened on impeachment on Friday

Love these impeachment live-blogs.

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#789

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday failed to meet a subpoena deadline from the House to produce Ukraine-related documents.

A House Foreign Affairs Committee aide told CNN that "Secretary Pompeo has failed to meet the deadline to produce documents required by the subpoena. However, the State Department has contacted the Committees on this matter and we hope the Department will cooperate in full promptly. Apart from the outstanding subpoena, we look forward to hearing from Ambassadors Sondland and Yovanovitch next week."

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#790

Does anybody here know who the hell Richard Ketay is? A search revealed nothing.

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#791

The Palmer Report…which is just one guy reporting, and a self-styled “Expert” says he can not figure it out…but thinks it is made up. We’ve heard more than 13,000 lies coming from this Prez…so we can add this to the pile 'o lies. :hear_no_evil:

Who is Richard Ketay? That’s the question everyone is left asking tonight, after Donald Trump tweeted a lengthy quote that sounded exactly like something Donald Trump would say, and then attributed it to a person no one has ever heard of – and we’re not even sure if the person really exists.

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#792

Um… all of these are re-tweets by Donnie







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They’re attacking the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community now.

Edit: I checked, there is no sign that anybody in actual media knows who the whistleblower is. This seems to be total conspiracy.

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